Weaving humour and searing honesty, author Ian Brown chronicled a life-changing journey that began when his son Walker was born with “an impossibly rare genetic mutation.” Emil’s adaptation of The Boy in the Moon premiered at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in September 2014.
“In Sher’s adaptation and Chris Abraham’s production, the story moves back and forth expertly from the very precise details of Brown-Schneller’s lives to some big philosophical quandaries.”
-Karen Fricker, The Toronto Star
Ian Brown’s moving and beautifully written account of raising his son Walker first appeared in The Globe and Mail. The landscape of the enriching, exhausting world that Ian so artfully portrayed grew that much wider in The Boy in the Moon, an acclaimed book that was selected as one of the Best Books of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review. At the heart of Ian’s journey is a question: what is the value of a life like Walker Brown’s? Does the struggle to answer questions about the limitations of Walker’s life reveal the limitations of our own?
A stage play makes for fertile ground for challenging questions, and Emil had the good fortune to explore them in his adaptation of The Boy in the Moon, thanks to a co-commission from the Great Canadian Theatre Company and the Belfry Theatre. Read his playwright’s notes here. The play premiered at GCTC in a production directed by Eric Coates and generously supported by the Charles Dalfen Tribute Fund.
The Boy In The Moon was chosen as the closing show for Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre premiere season in May 2017.